I just rewatched the movie and I would like to ask something:
By what I understand, Mari and her unit 08 (overlapping compliant) were designed as a backup plan in case the attempt to destroy unit 13 with Asuka failed. It seems that Mari's Eva was built in a way as to profit the most from this hability of absorbing/eating angels and other Evas, as we saw Eva 01 do in other circumstances. This coupled with her decades of experience piloting Evas and past proximity to Gendo, Yui and Fuyutsuki would make her ideal for a final showdown against Nerv.
What I don't understand is from where came the necessity for Shinji to fight and pilot Eva 01. Couldn't Mari do this in his place either with her own Eva or piloting Eva 01? Why Shinji was needed? Willie personnel also analysed his synchronisation with Eva 01 as zero, why would they prefer Shinji to fight Gendo while Mari was just his Uber to the minus space/anti reality?

The most logical reason be just storytelling, plot armor, it HAS to be about Shinji.

But I bet there are better reasons to be found for that, for one, navigating the minus space doesn't seem that easy. It is for Shinji, maybe, because of his link to his father and eva13, he just teleports over. Also Rei still being in 01 and Shinji's connection with her. And finally, his sync rate turned out to be not zero, but infinite, probably better than any other pilot could ever manage.

Ofcourse, all these things where kinda impossible to know for Wille at the time when making the decisions, so I understand your question.

Afterwards Mari reacted in a way when she found Shinji like "finally, I found you", apparently it wasn't easy, and since it's special timey whimey stuff, maybe it even took her years to find him in there.

I don't think Wille would prefer Shinji to fight Gendo (as it was shown, some characters were even directly opposed to it), but rather Misato prefers it.

Just had a random question pop into my head when reading another thread and this seems like a relevant place to ask it:

When rebuilt Mark 9 takes over the Wunder, besides growing wings of light, the doors leading to Shinji's quarters are unlocked. Is this Fuyutsuki's ultimate act of sabotage against Gendo's plans: sending his own son after him?

nerv bae wrote:When rebuilt Mark 9 takes over the Wunder, besides growing wings of light, the doors leading to Shinji's quarters are unlocked. Is this Fuyutsuki's ultimate act of sabotage against Gendo's plans: sending his own son after him?

No; The opposite - Gendo was planning on this, like he explains in minus space, the "mirror battle" was part of his "ritual"
Though if Shinji didn't come (as in, didn't leave the room), he likely would have done the ritual with Rei as the pilot

Gendo is also completely unfazed when Rei lets Shinji in right under his nose, he's just like "You sure about that"? but not shocked/betrayed.

He likes to think he's transcended all human weakness after 'ascending' & thus acts in this unfazed super detached manner but as we see later he couldn't wholly escape his old weakness.

To begin with EVA 01 and 13 are both a power level over the regular EVAs being 'godlike', especially after having awakened. They're equal in power.

Mari is trying to raise her EVA's level of godlike power by nomming all the Adam's vessels, but at the point that she brings Shinji to EVA 01, she's eaten only one.
That was enough to go in and out of minus space, but maybe not enough to be a match for EVA 13.

In any case, she goes back outside to destroy the other three ships and eat the other adam's vessels.

Perhaps if she didn't they could have been a problem later, or, eating one Adam's vessel lets you get into minus space but not all the way to the golgotha object.

Or perhaps, if Gendo had not already been talked down by then, Mari would have planned to join the battle after being fully powered up.

It's possible that had she not sunk the other ships they might've interfered with Misato's & Ritsuko's plan to make an extra spear.

Kendrix wrote:No; The opposite - Gendo was planning on this, like he explains in minus space, the "mirror battle" was part of his "ritual"
Though if Shinji didn't come (as in, didn't leave the room), he likely would have done the ritual with Rei as the pilot

I've gone through the script this morning looking for evidence that Shinji's intervention is desired by Gendo (such that Wunder's doors unlocking are part of Gendo's plan, not Fuyutsuki's rebellion) and I'm not totally convinced. Some quotes:

When Shinji takes over Unit 01 from Rei:

Gendo:
<Eva-01's pilot has awakened, I see.>

After this, Unit 01 takes a spear from Unit 13 and they both fall to the Golgotha Object, where Gendo demands:

Gendo:
Hand over Eva-01 like a good boy. ↓
If you do, you'll see your mother again as well.

They get ready for battle on the sound stage, and:

Gendo:
You leave me no choice.
We'll do this the hard way.

They battle fruitlessly and we reach your quote:

Gendo:
The thirteenth Eva, unit of despair, is counterpart to Eva-01, unit of hope.
Together, they are coming into alignment... tuning.
This, too, is a ceremony I require.

Then they stop fighting and Gendo uses both spears on Eva Imaginary to trigger Another Impact.

I'm not sold that Gendo actually wanted Shinji to be there; as you said it seems like Gendo's original intent was to use Rei (for the alignment / tuning of Units 01 and 13, whether in mock combat as we saw or through some other form of ceremony).

Gendo:
The thirteenth Eva, unit of despair, is counterpart to Eva-01, unit of hope.
Together, they are coming into alignment... tuning.
This, too, is a ceremony I require.

I really need to watch it a few more times, I really didnt get all that...

But, funny, this makes me think of RahXephon so much, where RahXephon was kind of an Evanglion ripoff, it's come back full circle

Anyways, I too get the impression that Gendo didnt count on Shinji being there.
Zeruel nomming Rei and then Shinji causing Eva-01 to awaken, so 01 with Rei in it could be used later.
Later doing practically the same with 13, having Kaworu in it, and again Shinji causing it to awaken.
At that point Gendo has used Shinji for what he needed him for, probably expecting Shinji to stay in his depressed state after.

Gendo says he can see the other possibilities, so he has seen that Shinji always breaks down in the end. Things that happened during the rest of the movies is to make sure of this, like the cold harsh treatment Gendo gives him. I mean, you can be an asshole of a father, ofcourse, but at least Shinji is an important pilot, why would Gendo be rejecting him as he did after the dummyplug incident?

One of the things that went wrong for Gendo is that he found out he still has an AT-field, while he had thought to have gotten rid of such a "weakness", this was caused by Shinji confronting him.
This is something that Mari wouldn't be able to do.

There's quite some talk about fate, how the children's fate has been preordained 14 years ago, how Gendo can see other possibilities, things being written in book of life, etc. I think up to the point Gendo tricked Kaworu with the spears, and 13 awakening, everything was perfectly predictable (it all has happened before), but after, it went off the rails, things became unpredictable (which Gendo needed for the situation to change this time), including Shinji's "growing up". This time Shinji putting a stop to the loop by removing the Eva's.

So it always has to be Shinji who in the end rejects whatever big plan his father and or Seele has put in motion.

Zoop wrote:At that point Gendo has used Shinji for what he needed him for, probably expecting Shinji to stay in his depressed state after.

At the end of his Instrumentrumentality, Gendo says this:

Gendo: Until the very end, I wasn't sure if Shinji was needed to rebuild Yui.

I think Gendo expected Shinji to be there, even although he doesn't know if Shinji would be necessary.

Kendrix wrote:

nerv bae#931666 wrote:He likes to think he's transcended all human weakness after 'ascending' & thus acts in this unfazed super detached manner but as we see later he couldn't wholly escape his old weakness.

Woah, dude, you sound like a Wille apologist.
In a sense, depending on what exactly is god slaying, Gendo is the most altruistic of all people Evangelion: he wants to free his wife from her robotic prison.
Meanwhile Shinji just wanted to erase Eva from reality, in a huge escapism...

I feel that this ending could have been avoided if Shinji didn't enter Unit 01 to fight Gendo. Mari could have maybe done it and Shinji walked right into Gendo's plan because Unit 01 was necessary in his plans.

It is understandable why he took this decision though, we all know at a deeper level Shinji strongly identifies with being an Eva pilot and taking daddy's orders.

As well from Wille's perspective what other options did they have to really trust in aside from Mari? Sure her Unit was able to enter the Minus Space but that doesn't necessarily means she should be the only one to do it. Keep in mind they just lost Asuka on a mission that Mari was also teamed up with her in.

When they both enter the Minus Space, is Mari even able to locate Unit 01? Seems like that's something Shinji can do based(though unexplained) on the fact that he's a significant pilot for that Unit.

Personally I don't feel letting Shinji in Unit 01 was the right decision, but it did get the job done. Unfortunately "the job" was saving Asuka and eliminating Unit 13 and not stopping Gendo from hunting the Evangelion god.

well unit 13 at that point was basically a god and considering that Asuka considered the mission to stop the final impact a suicide mission because of the comment she made about the plugsuits and the fact that wille launched a large number of probes at the space to preserve life in case they failed it is possible that Misato decided that at the time also at that point the wunder was useless and mari says it was going to be very difficult to track gendo in the anti-universe, something that They should have done better in the movie was the battle between unit 01 and 13. They should have shown that both Evas fought for a long time and violently, perhaps severed limbs or one of the two Evas completely destroyed and then when they switched between scenario both evas will appear intact making it clear that fighting in that place is basically useless in the first place.

The18°angel wrote:They should have shown that both Evas fought for a long time and violently, perhaps severed limbs or one of the two Evas completely destroyed and then when they switched between scenario both evas will appear intact making it clear that fighting in that place is basically useless in the first place.

Didn't the film already make it clear that Unit 01 and Unit 13 fighting is useless?

nerv bae wrote:

The18°angel#931812 wrote:They should have shown that both Evas fought for a long time and violently, perhaps severed limbs or one of the two Evas completely destroyed and then when they switched between scenario both evas will appear intact making it clear that fighting in that place is basically useless in the first place.

Didn't the film already make it clear that Unit 01 and Unit 13 fighting is useless?

Then that means that Mari would have lose in a fight againts unit 13, so Shinji getting into unit 01 was fated to happen one way or another unless he was death

The18°angel wrote:something that They should have done better in the movie was the battle between unit 01 and 13. They should have shown that both Evas fought for a long time and violently, perhaps severed limbs or one of the two Evas completely destroyed and then when they switched between scenario both evas will appear intact making it clear that fighting in that place is basically useless in the first place.

Interestingly, one of Yamashita's tweets of an artwork of Shin he made under Tsurumaki's request had something like that in mind: we saw 01 and 13 as being of lights in a fight to the death, with Yamashita saying that it was both Evas that fought so hard and so long that Shinji and Gendo's bodies inside died a long time ago and that both gods will fight until the end of the universe. Spooky stuff.